Adventures in Adventureland

My father worked nights when I was growing up, he had a 4 day 10 hour a day schedule and was off every Friday. When I got up to go to school he would be sleeping and when I got home from school he had left for work except on Fridays. Both he and my Mother love what I would call old movies, now of course old movies is a relative term and while it is true they loved old movies, a lot of the movies they loved weren't old to them they were the movies from their childhood. It's exactly how my son loves "old stuff from the 1980's"...stuff from the 80's isn't old...oh wait... The 1980's when I grew up was the golden age of the VCR, for most people being able to record shows and sporting events was a big deal. Since my Dad missed nightly television he would leave instructions for me to tape programs while he was at work. Dad was pretty particular about what he wanted recorded (thankfully he preferred to watch sports live so he never put that burden on me) , and it was mostly movies from the 50's. I also had to record "The Wonder Years" for him. Honestly as I think back it was mostly movies from the 50's and The Wonder Years. So I never really knew what he had in store for me, it wasn't every night or anything like that but it was fairly often. I'd get home from school and he'd have left notes around the house , multiple notes! The TV would have a sheet taped over the screen "Channel 11, 8PM", and a video cassette would be blocking the front of the VCR and maybe the remote control was sitting on top of the cassette. If that wasn't enough he would tape a note to the bathroom mirror "Channel 11, 8PM", there might be another note on the refrigerator "Channel 11, 8PM", it all depended on how badly he wanted a particular show. We did not have cable growing up (my Dad still does not have cable) but it was okay because we lived outside Los Angeles and in the 1980's the local non network affiliated channels filled prime time with movies, especially KTLA 5, KCOP 13 and KTTV 11. Dad wanted his programming commercial free, which meant I had to watch this stuff attentively so I could pause the tape during commercial breaks, I had a pretty good record of not falling asleep at the switch. Most of the time I would groan at being subjected to what I was sure would be some moldy oldy but to my surprise (nearly every time) it turned out I would really enjoy the show. This was the way I was introduced to one of my most favorite movies...Alfred Hitchcock's North By Northwest starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason. This movie has classic cars (well they were new at the time), fantastic Architecture, and a thrilling, clever plot. Another such film I was introduced to was the 1951 film "The African Queen" starring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn.

Don't be fooled into using the bathrooms ahead on the right, there is a "secret" bathroom in the Tiki Room to your left!

The African Queen is one of my folks most favorite movies (that they both love), it is about a scruffy skipper and a very polished Missionary forced to go on an adventure through the jungle on a strangely familiar little boat. They experience trials & tribulations including wading through leech infested waters and end up having to face hostile Germans during the time of World War I. I was expecting it to be torture, but to my surprise it was actually a fun adventure movie...my 1980's self might have described it like an old tymey Indiana Jones movie. It felt very familiar to me and I remember finding the overall setting and aesthetic to be very Disneyland Jungle Cruise, and the African Queen (Bogie's Boat) was a dead ringer for one of the Jungle Cruise boats.

This is not a sketch of a Jungle Cruise boat like it is in a previous post, in this post this same drawing is a sketch of "The African Queen", can't you see the leech infested water?

Of course the Jungle Cruise being like "The African Queen" was all very intentional, what with Disneyland opening in 1955 I would imagine this movie would have been very fresh in the public consciousness. A lot of Disney fans complain about "Intellectual Property", that is to say attractions based on specific film franchises taking over the parks. While it is true that the latest attractions are based on film properties, were the original classic attractions really all that divorced from previous film & literary genres? Disneyland was a revolutionary experience because it allowed the visitor to walk through a movie set environment.  This was nearly an entirely new concept(nearby Knotts Berry Farm predates it of course but it was limited to one world..."The Old West"). The individual lands reference the shared iconography of contemporary films (The Western, The Sci-Fi Flick, The Jungle Movie, The Good Old Days, etc.). While not necessarily "Intellectual Property" in the literal sense (except for say the works of Mark Twain or in Fantasyland) the settings are familiar to the patron because they recall types of movies. The Disney bench was not as deep as it is today where it seems like they own literally nearly everything. Vintage Disneyland built upon recognized film genres though, it is for that reason that Indiana Jones can be plopped down between the Jungle Cruise and the Swiss Family Treehouse years later and a sense of harmony is maintained. I think what has changed is that for the audiences of today it is not enough to engage in a type of story, they want to engage in specific stories (The world of Harry Potter, or Star Wars, etc.) So I don't automatically worry that new attractions are linked to "Intellectual Properties". As long as you get to live in a fantastic world for a few moments and it is made to a certain level of detail and sophistication it will mostly likely be consistent with Disney quality.

The sketch: the gateway to Adventure beckons...will you answer it's call? Sure but first let me get a Dole Whip and hey while we are here lets catch the Tiki Room, we can use the "secret" bathroom while we are at it. The shows over...oh no it looks like we have been dumped into that solid mob of people between here and the Pirates of the Caribbean. Well not in my sketch, I tend not to draw a lot (or any) people....they get in the way of the buildings.